Rose Tinted Glasses
by Rookofhearts
Summary: A little girl gets in over her head. What will happen when she's caught red handed by a caped crime fighter? Is this the start of a series of wacky and action filled adventures? Read and find out. Ch.1,2&3 rewritten.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Inside the Police Station

Today, like most days, the station is filled with the bustle of people. People are ether typing, talking on phones or doing some other police related business. Numerous crimes had been reported throughout the day, so many, that the smaller crimes that had happened that day would not be dealt with until weeks later. The officials of this city had, however, gotten use to this type of operation. The city, no, not just the city, the whole world has been going through an high bout of crime, crime caused by super powered beings. In some way or another certain people (or non-human beings) obtained abilities greater then that of normal people. Some of these beings decided to use their powers for illegal acts; the only ones who can stop them most of the time are those who also have extraordinary powers.

For the most part the superheroes were able to keep them at bay, but it became difficult when the number of villains started to multiply exponentially. That is when the super villains start to band together, making it become nearly impossible to stop them. Groups that were composed of a few super villains (very few teams had more then ten) were called super gangs. They would work together to take over towns, run large underground crime rings and sometimes just did petty larceny. Many citizens feared them and gave into their demands whatever they may be.

However, the situation now is not as bad as it was then as crime has significantly lowered in recent years. The heroes, through a combination of well thought out strategies, good co-operation and perhaps a little luck, made strides in their resistance against the super gangs. Despite this, many places were still as busy as they were before, like this Police Station.

A man with a long tan trench coat on, matted black hair, and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth, is going largely unnoticed as he entered the police station. No one even glances at the ten-year-old girl struggling in his grasp. Her dark brown hair is a mess and she wears what looks to be a dirty old grey sweater. She also wears a sort of a make-shift skirt made from a large ripped white t-shirt. She frowns as she tried to pry the fingers off of her wrist, they don't budge an inch.

He pulled her towards a small lounge like area in the middle of the department. The room was empty except for a few chairs. The top half of the walls are made of glass windows, the three doors of the room are made of glass as well.

After the man got her in the lounge he let her go and closed the door behind them. She tried to reach each door of the room, but each time the man stood in her way. When she saw that there was no way around the large man, she sat down on one of the chairs. Sitting there, she gripped the edge of the chair and looked angrily into the eyes of the man who brought her there.

The man sighed and scratched his head. He hated having to deal with kids, especially little girls. He wasn't good with kids and people always looked at him like he was the bad guy when he had to deal with them. It didn't help that he had the appearance of a bad guy with his rough shaped chin and his gruff demeanour (chasing after a little girl doesn't help much ether). What was worse was that the girl had taken his hat and refused to tell him where she put it. He kneels down and looks her straight in the eye.

"Listen kid, I'm just trying to do my job." he says sternly; he pauses to see if she would say anything. She doesn't so he continues but this time in a softer voice, "and part of my job is to make sure that kids like you don't get hurt running around the city. Do you understand?"

The little girl still doesn't say anything and does not stop angrily staring at him.

"Hey, Harvey! What are you doing?" a voice suddenly called out. The man named Harvey turns around to see a woman in a red jacket and a long black ponytail, poking her head through one of the doors. She holds a phone in her right hand while covering the speaker with her left.

"Dealing with what I think is a runaway." Harvey replied.

"You're dealing with a runaway while you have a mur- um, while you have other cases to do." she said, changing her sentence part way through. She didn't want to scare the girl with talk of murder. However, the little girl doesn't seem to notice as she is wrapped in her own silent tantrum. "I have Matt Jenkins on the phone and he needs to talk to you." the woman continues, tilting the phone in his direction as she speaks.

"Okay, look after the kid will yeah."

"What? No, I have work to do. I'm not babysitting."

"It's okay, I'll do it, I have time." A third voice chimes in.

The two turn their heads to see a white haired man coming through one of the doors. He has a trench coat on that is a lighter colour then Harvey's and a moustache that is as white as his hair.

"I'll watch the kid. Bullock, go take the phone call but make it quick, I'm waiting on a phone call myself." the white haired man said quickly and authoritatively.

"Okay." Bullock says taking the phone from Yin as they both made their way out. After the door shuts behind them the girl spoke.

"I didn't do anything." she muttered staring at the floor.

The man looks at her from the corner of his eye before turning so he directly faced her. She looked up at him waiting for him to say something. All he did was tilt his head to the left to indicate he wanted to hear her explanation.

"I was just minding my own business when that guy started yelling at me. I got scarred so I ran and then he caught me and brought me here even though I didn't do anything!" she shouted all this while hunched over, staring at the floor and swinging her legs back and forth.

The man just stared blankly at her before chuckling. The girl look up at him and frowned. He stopped chuckling.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Why do you care?"

"Well, I'd like to know so I just don't have to call you kid or girl. Unless, of course, you want me to call you kid or girl."

"… It's Mira."

"Okay Mira, where are your parents?"

"Why does everyone always ask that?" she mumbles, the man hears it but chose not to comment on it. "Why do you want to know?" she asks clearly.

"I want to know," he pauses to look at his watch before continuing, "because I want to help you, and I can't do that if I don't know where your parents are."

"Humph, you don't want to help me. If any one wanted to help me they would give me a ticket out of this stinking town. That would be real helpful."

The man frowned gravely at that. He was about to comment on it when his cell phone rang. He looked at his phone then he looked through one of the glass windows of the room. Bullock looked like he was almost done with his phone call. He quickly fuddled around in his pockets until he found what he was looking for.

"Here. If you ever need help or someone to talk to, call me." the man said while handing her his card.

She took it and started to read all the text on it. She was puzzled by the word 'commissioner'. she wondered what did that mean. By the time she looked back up the man was in the other room on his cell phone.

Bullock, done with his phone call, was about to go back into the room when the Commissioner stops him.

"Her name's Mira." the Commissioner says while closing his hand over the speaker.

"What?" Bullock says.

"That's what the girl said, her name is Mira."

"Oh, thanks." Bullock said before the Commissioner waves him away.

The Commissioner started to zone out while the man on the other end of the call was prattling on about his kids (this phone call was not suppose to be about this man's kids, the Commissioner was not sure how this conversation had turned into one). Why had he given that girl his card? He blamed his action on his weakness for kids. His fatherly instinct tended to override his logic skills. If she needed help she could get it from an officer or more likely a social worker. He would be to be busy to help her if she needed it any ways. Bullock's voice interrupted his train of thought.

"Hey, where'd she go?" asks Harvey, looking around him as he stands in the now empty lounge room.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

On Fifth Avenue

The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Avenues are old and litter infested streets. The buildings there are in disrepair and they reek of gasoline and burnt garbage. There is almost always someone sleeping on the streets' curbs and their alleyways are seldom travelled, except for the occasional thief or homeless person.

These streets use to be home to many different super gangs, not all at the same time though. Nearly every week a different gang was calling this area their "turf" back when times were tougher. Nowadays, the gangs had ether moved on to another part of the city or the groups had split up then left. Some would think that would make the area more hospitable but it only made the place more open to normal criminals. The turmoil that had been caused by the super gangs had left a permanent reputation on the area. This in turn, made many leave their residence or establishment for "safer" parts of the city. The left over buildings then became good places for the poor to reside or for others to hide out in. Thus, this section of the city also became a okay place for Mira to live.

Mira stands hunched over with her hands on her knees. She's breathing heavily as she had to run most of the way to get to here. After getting her breathing under control she stretches herself to relax her muscles. She frowns as she notices how orange the sky is getting. She hadn't thought she had been gone that long. Though, she'd have never gotten there at all if Bullock hadn't got distracted and the Police Officers weren't too busy to notice or stop her.

After one more gulp of air, she starts to walk up the street she had arrived on. She starts to mull over the events of the day and begins to worry because of them. She lost all the change she had received on the streets that day, then she got caught by the police and now she was really late in coming back home. He usually got upset when she failed to get any money and getting caught was the one thing he told her she was never suppose to let happen. He wouldn't be angry about her coming late though. She had been gone for three days once and he didn't even seem to notice. She only worried about being late because she didn't like to be on Fifth Avenue after dark. She tried to put those fears away, she had to focus on getting back to the house right now.

She gingerly walks up the street towards the house; she wants to run but she knows that would draw attention to herself. So, she walks by the homeless man and the bunch of scary looking teenagers while resisting her urge to bolt.

A few minutes later she was at the front of the house. It's a ratty old house with broken windows and an illegible text spray painted across the front wall. She walks through the house as cautiously as she had walked through the streets. There was a good chance that while she was gone, others had moved into the house. After a thorough inspection of the house she deems that no one was there. She''s happy about that for a second until she realises that meant Darrel wasn't there ether.

Mira takes to the streets again, walking back down Fifth Avenue this time. Darrel was a tough guy, more then capable of taking care of himself, but she couldn't help worry about him when it got dark. She doesn't go very far when she sees the group of teenagers she saw from before. Taking a closer look at them now she recognizes them as being friends of Darrel's.

"Have you seen my brother?" she asks the teens as nonchalantly as she could muster.

"Uh, your brother? Let's see, um, oh yeah! He and the mechanics are searching for parts around the other end of the street." The male teenager sitting in the middle of the group says then points towards the direction she came from.

"Oh no, not again." Mira thinks to herself before saying "Okay, thank you." she says before running off in the direction the teen indicated.

She hears laughter coming from the teens as she leaves. People always seemed to find something funny whenever she was not in earshot to hear their joke. It annoyed her but she ignored it.

Reaching the halfway point of the street she remembers that it isn't a good idea to run. She didn't stop running though. If her brother is doing what she thinks he is doing then she has to hurry to stop him.

Mira stands at the end of the street, panting for the third time that day. She frantically looks around her. The end of Fifth Avenue had several alleyways and was cut off by a large length of chain link fence. Upon hearing the sound of clanging tools coming from one of the alleyways she decides to investigate even though she knows what she'll find.

There are about eight different boys crouched around the back of a bright red coloured car that is parked in the alleyway. They are working together to get off all the tires from the car. The front of the car, which Mira is standing at, had it's two wheels already taken off and replaced with blocks. The boys are in the process of getting the back two wheels off.

The boy on look out notices Mira first but doesn't know whether to say anything as she slowly walks around the right side of the car. As she moves, a few of the boys look up at her, but they just go back to work after seeing her except for one who nudges another guy. The nudged teen looks up and furrows his eyebrows at the sight of her.

"Mira, what are you doing here?" the boy says, his voice hushed and annoyed.

"What are you doing?" she whispers back to him, she tried to sound angry but instead she comes off as sounding scared.

"I'm being a good Samaritan and giving this guy free car insurance." he jokes and then goes back to doing his work.

Mira clenches her fists and her face turns red. She angrily whispers back, "Darrel, stop this right now."

"Why should I?" he says while focusing on loosening a bolt.

"Because, you could get in trouble."

"With who? The cops? They never catch us."

Mira knows that's true. She also knows it's probably useless to try and reason with her brother but she had become nervous after getting caught by that cop.

"Well, what about the owner of the car?" she tries to refute.

Darrel rolls his eyes, annoyed at her attempt to change his ways, yet again. He decides to play along, for now.

"Pfft, what's he going to do?" he says without taking his eyes from his work.

Mira knows the answer is 'nothing' so she decides to try from another angle "don't you think he needs those wheels?"

"Everybody needs wheels but not everybody has a license."

Several of the guys chuckle at that. Mira stares down at the car, silently fuming. It was then that she notices that something about the interior of the car isn't normal. She cups her hands on the window and peers in; none of the boys noticing her doing so. It looks like someone had taken out the radio and replaced it with their own weird looking radio. It also looks like they put in an assortment of other buttons, levels and other devices in it that Mira couldn't imagine what they did.

"Snap!" she thought, she pushes herself away from the car as she realises whom it belonged to. "Darrel. This is that guy's car." she whispers in shock.

"Who's car?"

"That vigilante guy's car. The one that's always in the newspapers." Mira couldn't remember the name (mostly because she had trouble reading) but she recognises the car from the pictures.

Darrel now standing in front of her, looks at her with an amused look, "Uh huh, so, let me get this straight. A masked guy who reportedly is a force to be reckoned with, travels in a bright red sedan." he says, smirking as though he just told a funny joke.

He thinks Mira is clearly just making up stuff to keep him from swiping the wheels. It's a pretty feeble excuse, but it doesn't really matter now any how, he says to himself.

"But…" she's about to point out the electronics inside the car but realizes that if she did that it probably wouldn't deter him. It would more likely make him want to break into the car and steal the electronics too.

"Exactly, he wouldn't." Darrel said, misreading her pause, "Now go home already."

He likes watching his sister get all flustered because of him but right now he was tired of her.

"Well, um, but… You, have to stop, because, because, it's the wrong thing to do." she whispered exasperated. She tries one last argument though it isn't very good She's not exactly a great debater but then who is at that age. Getting nervous about the vigilante coming back to get his car isn't helping ether. She couldn't help but dart her head around nervously.

Her remark, in the meantime, made Darrel look at her dumbfounded before he spouts into a stifled laugh.

"Are you serious?" Darrel says after managing to get his laughter under control.

By this point Mira is so angry she almost forgets to whisper, "Yes, I am. You don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you." She wanted to say something like that to Darrel for ages but she could never think of a way to say it that didn't make it sound, corny. She still couldn't make it sound serious but her nerves tended to made her say very childish things.

Darrel was going to laugh again but he doesn't want to make his sister so angry that she starts yelling so he just says, "Mira, you are way too much like a girl scout." He holds out a large wrench towards Mira's hands, which she grabs by instinct, and then Darrel runs off down to the other end of the alleyway.

Mira then realizes that the boys had finished taking the wheels from the car a while ago. Darrel seemed to have stayed behind only to finish the conversation he was having with her. Mira cheeks blush with embarrassment and anger. Embarrassment for not realising it sooner and anger for Darrel leaving her behind. She was going to shout at Darrel for running off on her but then she feels a presence behind her. She whirls around to see a caped individual standing in front of the car.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

In the alleyway

There are many different heroes in this world. Some of them have powers, some of them do not. Some of them wear bright flashy costumes, some of them wear a uniform and others only wear normal clothing (except maybe during Halloween).

The man in front of the red sedan is a rare kind that had no powers and yet is called a superhero. A vigilante who normally fights those without powers but can still put up a fight against those with them. Some call him a menace, thinking that if he should fight crime at all it should be as a cop. His supporters claim that he is better then the cops and they wish for him to continue his efforts without a badge. Some claim that without him, the whole world would still be under tyrannical rule. While again, others say that the world would have been fine with or without him. Nevertheless, he has always fought for what he believes is right, whatever that might be.

The orange glow of the sky is proceeding to turn to a dark shade of blue. Mira stands there, with her mouth gaping, staring at the hero that stares back at her. At least, she thinks he is staring at her. It's hard to tell with the mask shrouding his face. Mira had never seen a superhero before and was so over come with shock that she could do nothing but stare. The minutes ticked by as neither one moves.

After a full three minutes had past the man sighs. He takes out a small device and directs it at the car. When he presses a small button the lights on the car's lights flash. After that he walks over to the side of the car, opens the door and starts poking around. He checks the devices within, probably checking to see whether anything was stolen from inside.

Mira finally gets a hold over her senses and thinks that she should say something. Although, she's not sure what to say. She can't even remember what the superhero's name is. She tries to think back to the name that the newspapers called him.

"R- Re- Red Hood-d?" she sputters her sudden recollection aloud.

"What gave me away?" he says while still searching through the car.

He finishes looking through the car shortly after. With another sigh he looks back to Mira. Again, it is hard for Mira to tell his expression or even if he is looking at her through the red dome that covers his head. She looks down to avoid his gaze, if he is giving one, and realises she is still holding the lug wrench that her brother handed her.

She looks up and quickly says, "I didn't do it."

She drops the lug wrench to the ground to hold her hands up. The tool just barely misses hitting her feet. Red Hood continues to stand there, not saying anything. Mira is nervous by his silence and continues.

"It was, was…" she starts to say, shakily pointing behind her, but then she remembers that it was wrong to be a snitch, "um, okay, it was me but I'll never do it again, I promise." She blurts out with her face getting pale and her hands curling up below her face.

Red Hood slowly walks towards her. Mira closes her eyes and covers her face and head. She started to imagine the beating she would get. She didn't know much about superheroes but she knew what they did to the villains.

When a few minutes past and nothing happened, she moves one of her arms out of the way to peek at the red caped man. She saw that Red Hood with a handkerchief in his palm. He holds it out to her and she slowly takes it from him. She wonders what it is for but then she notices that her face is wet. Apparently, she started to cry without realising it. She uses the handkerchief and her hands to wipe away her tears as fast as she can. One rule she had learned in her short life was that you should you never cry in front of other people, ever. After she is done she hands the handkerchief back to Red Hood while looking down again. He says nothing as he takes it back from her.

"I'm not going to do anything to you, you know that right?" he finally says. Mira looks up at him.

"What?" the little girl asks weakly.

"I'll let you off this one time, just don't go around blowing up any more banks." he says it in a pseudo serious voice while wagging his finger at her. She just stares at him with confused eyes. "No, seriously, I'm not going to do anything to you. You can go." he politely says to her.

At those words, Mira starts to slowly walk backwards. After she walking a few paces back she turns around and runs all the way to other the end of the alleyway.

Mira emerges onto Sixth Avenue panting, for the forth time that day, and sweating. She looks back down the alleyway. Despite the lessening sunlight, she can still see Red Hood with his car at the other end of the alley. The street lights start to turn on as she looks back. She was worried for a moment that Red Hood was just messing with her and wanted to chase her down the alleyway for fun. Mira is so relieved that he was honest and she could go. She's a little embarrassed at how worked up she got but nobody saw it any how so it's fine. She was about to cheerfully walk down Sixth Avenue and go to the house when she wonders about something.

Maybe she should go back. It's not everyday that a superhero is so close by. Maybe she could ask if he is willing to help her out. Superheroes are rich, right? On the other hand, he might not take too kindly to a little girl pestering him. In the end it has to be a battle between her child-like curiosity and her street smart instincts. Her curiosity tells her she should go investigate but her instincts tell her, well actually, her instincts told her to go investigate as well. It probably has something do with her not wanting to walk down a bad neighbourhood, at night, alone. At least near a vigilante she'd be slightly safer, she thinks.

Following her curiosity's encouragement (and her instinct's), Mira starts to walk up to the dead end of Sixth Avenue which is blocked off by the same chain link fence that Fifth Avenue is blocked off by. There, she heads back to Fifth Avenue by going through the little bit of space there is between the buildings and the fence. Her thinking is that it would be better if she went to talk to Red Hood on the street rather then in a alleyway.

Very soon she finds her self back on Fifth Avenue. She looks down the road and realise that a small Oldsmobile is parked by the curb that wasn't there before. Mira wonders when that pulled up. She hadn't been gone that long had she. Though, the building she just walked around was pretty big and it was slow moving coming back as she had to side step through the small gap. She figures it doesn't matter that is until she notices that two people are moving a couple of wheels from the back seat of the car. Peaking from behind the wall of the building she could see there faces very clearly. It didn't help that they wore sun glasses and baseball caps.

Mira wants to get a better look at the guys that are there. She starts to think that maybe Red Hood has some sort of special mechanics. She starts wondering how that would work, how does he pay them, do they know his idenity, do they know that wearing sun glasses at night looks very suspicious and many more questions. She figures the only way she's going to learn more is if she gets closer.

She quickly darts behind the car, hoping that they didn't see her. She peeks through the windows to see that Red Hood and the other two people are talking in a hushed manner as all three of them set to replace the wheels. She could just barely make out what they were saying to each other.

"I'll be sure to install some when we get back." one of the men can be heard saying. He sounds rather irritated.

"Yeah, then you could install one for the hood ornament." Red Hood remarks. Mira is surprised to find that Red Hood sounds like he thinks the situation is droll. He's not even finding it inconvenient.

The other man seemed to interrupt the first's reply with, "Okay, that's the last one."

Mira is bother shocked and scared that they did that so quickly. They already made are going back to the car. Now with them looking in her direction there isn't any way she can get out of there without them spotting her. One of the two men threw the tools they were using into the back seat, they were quietly chatting with each other as the one man opened the passenger side's door. She isn't listening to what they are saying, she is too concerned about the other man walking over to the driver seat. She panics, pulls open the back seat door and jumps in closing the door as the man at the passenger side closes his. Luckily for Mira, both men were too preoccupied talking to each other to notice her.

Mira is on the floor of the back seat praying that the driver doesn't spot her as he looks behind him. The car starts to move, it does a u-turn, and now is being driven away from the dead end. The little girl covers her mouth with her hands as she lets out a little whimper.


End file.
